Pretty Rieke had been detained in the dining-room longer than she
liked, the Pastor had performed his office of cup-bearer with an
unsteady hand, and moreover thought it necessary to accompany the
performance with long-winded, incoherent speeches; but the gentlemen at
the gaming-table had drunk the faster, and impatiently demanded more,
until at last Rieke, tired of the continual running to and fro which
seemed to have no end, resolutely carried the side-board with the bowl
upon it to the gaming-table, and thus rendered it possible for the
willing Pastor to present the glasses he filled himself. Then, after
leaning over Hans Redebas' chair and watching the game a few minutes,
she glided hastily out of the room.
She wanted to continue her conversation with Gotthold. The handsome,
quiet man had always pleased her, and she had played the role of spy,
which Brandow had assigned her, less from love for her master than
jealousy of her mistress, to whom she grudged the attentions of the
stately stranger. The generous present he had bestowed upon her that
morning had in some degree touched, and even puzzled her, and the
cordiality he had just shown had completely disarmed her. Of course he
had only come back for her mistress' sake, but to her fickle heart it
was no enigma how one object can be kept in view without losing sight
of another. She would even help him, if he was very, very friendly to
her; and after all, it was certainly better for her if the stranger
finally ran away with her mistress.
But she did not find him at the door, where she had left him. Besides,
the door was not a suitable place to continue the interesting
conversation, and the hall was equally undesirable. Perhaps he was in
the dining-room. He was not there; the trees in the garden, into which
she cast a glance, were tossing quite too rudely. Where could he have
gone? Where, except to his own room, to look after the things he had
left there! She must help him; he could not find anything in the dark.
The pretty servant-girl drew a long breath, and then in the twinkling
of an eye glided noiselessly up the stairs and across the hall to the
gable room Gotthold had occupied during his stay. Here she paused,
pressing her hands to her burning cheeks and heaving breast, and then
after a low knock, to which she expected no reply, slowly opened the
door, as if with timid reluctance. Her cheeks had burned, her heart had
throbbed in vain-the room was empty. She went to the window, and
instantly drew back again. There, close beneath her, in the children's
playground, was the man she sought, cautiously approaching the window
from which a faint, varying light fell upon the tree-trunks; and then
he disappeared--where, except through the nursery to her? She had not
given the two hypocrites credit for that; they knew how to help
themselves, to be sure! It was too shameless! Then the promise he had
made her several times, but which she had not really believed, that he
would make her his wife if the other was once out of the way, might
come true. At any rate, he should know it; they deserved nothing
better.
"What does this mean?" cried Hans Redebas, as Brandow, with a hasty
apology, rose from the table just as the cards had been cut.
"I'll come back directly," answered Brandow.
"That we should have expected," shouted Redebas. "Pastor, another
glass!" Brandow left the table unwillingly; he had been winning
considerable sums, and his gambler's superstition warned him that he
ought, not to turn his back upon the game; but Rieke had beckoned to
him over Hans Redebas' shock of black hair-something particularly
important must have happened.
He followed the girl into the hall, and from thence into the
sitting-room on the left, where she told him by signs to step lightly,
until they reached the narrow door that opened into Cecilia's
sleeping-room. A faint ray of light gleamed through the crack over the
threshold. The girl crouched down and put her ear to the door. Brandow
stood bending over her, also listening. They could distinctly hear some
one speaking, but neither who it was, nor what was said. But what did
it matter? To whom could she speak here, except to him? What could they
say except what they dared not suffer others to hear? And now the light
grew brighter--they had entered the sleeping-room. Brandow trembled
from head to foot with jealous fury. Should he rush in and strangle the
pair, expose them to open shame? But Gotthold was no longer the feeble
boy of former days; the result of a conflict with him, man to man, was
at least doubtful, and he had certainly already received his pay. The
disgrace would cling to him, and--it was too late! The barking of the
dog, which made him and his accomplice fly from the door, must have
warned them too; he would find the nest empty. Be it so; he had heard
enough.
"Well?" said Rieke, when they had glided back through the sitting-room
and were again standing in the hall.
"Go in, and say I will come directly," replied Brandow.
The tone in which he spoke predicted some evil; Rieke was almost sorry
for what she had done. "He isn't like you," she said soothingly, with
the most perfect sincerity.
Brandow laughed scornfully. "Go in," he repeated, stamping his foot.
The girl obeyed; Brandow went to the open door and gazed across the
dark court-yard towards the stables. The rain beat into his face, and
with it came the sickly odor of native tobacco. On the left, directly
under him, before the stone bench glowed a red spot, and a harsh voice
asked:
"Well, what about harnessing the horses?"
It was the man for whom he had just been looking, upon whom he had
depended for the execution of the plan of vengeance brooding darkly in
his soul, nay the man, as he now imagined, who had implanted its first
germ. So it was to be.
"He won't want to go away now, if it were only on account of the bad
weather."
"The others must go too."
"They have stayed here often enough."
"Send them away."
Brandow reflected a moment. "If I win a few hundred more, they will go
of their own accord," he murmured. "But you must give him a thorough
soaking, Hinrich--a thorough one, mind."
"Where there is no bottom," said Hinrich.
The words quivered through Brandow's soul like a flash of lightning
across a midnight sky. That was the very thing.
"And I'll give you whatever you ask!" he said, in a hoarse tone,
bending down into the cloud of smoke that rose from Hinrich's pipe.
"No pay, no work,--and that trick with Brownlock a little while ago
cost me five louis-d'or. I should like half down now."
"Here it is," said Brandow, feeling in his pocket, and giving him as
much of the gold he had just won as he could grasp.
"You have always been a good master to me," said Hinrich, rubbing the
gold pieces together in his horny palm.
"And will be a still better one in future."
"The gentlemen will go away if you don't come in at once," said Rieke,
hurrying out. She had left the door of the room open, and Hans Redebas'
gruff bass voice was heard shouting: "Brandow! Brandow!" amid shrill
laughter, and a hoarse tone repeating: "We won't go home! We won't go
home!"
"I'll get rid of you," muttered Brandow. "You will stay here, Hinrich."
"I'll wait, sir."
Brandow went back into the gaming-room.
"You are taking an undue advantage of the freedom the accidental
absence of ladies bestows," said Brandow, with cutting contempt, as his
guests received him with upraised glasses and a halloo, to which Gustav
von Plueggen added a loud hip, hip, hurrah!
"Accidental?" cried Hans Redebas; "not at all accidental; you are
driving a good business to-day."
"And where is your wife?" said Otto von Plueggen.
"I demand an explanation of this," cried Brandow; "I will not permit--"
He paused suddenly. Turning angrily towards Otto von Plueggen, he saw
Gotthold, who must have entered the room directly behind him, and had
unquestionably heard all. It was impossible to discuss this subject in
his presence. So, with a violent effort, he forced back the furious
hate that surged up in his heart at the sight of his face, and cried:
"So there you are at last! Where in the world have you hidden yourself?
Thank God, you have come to put an end to this horrible gambling."
"Ho! ho!" exclaimed Hans Redebas, "horrible gambling! Is that the way
the wind blows? I believe you! He has won six hundred or more already.
Does that taste badly?"
"I owe no man any revenge, however," cried Brandow, with a gesture of
exaggerated violence.
"But, Brandow," expostulated the Assessor, "you mustn't weigh every
word; Redebas had no intention of offending you. He only wanted to
continue the game, and, to speak frankly, I don't see what we could do
better."
"Well, Herr Assessor, if you think what you have also won--"
"The few thalers!" said the Assessor, not without some little
embarrassment.
"I can certainly make no objection," continued Brandow. "I only thought
that this little consideration was due our friend Gotthold, who does
not play, and of whom we have seen so little, or rather I should say,
ourselves. He doesn't lose a great deal in dispensing with our society,
but we do in losing his."
"Pray don't disturb yourselves on my account," said Gotthold.
"Well, then, in the devil's name, go on," cried Hans Redebas, seizing
the cards. "I'll keep the bank for once, I can probably find a few
little savings still."
And with his left hand he drew from the thick pocketbook lying before
him a pile of bank-notes which he crushed together in a heap. "There
now, play in regular order, Brandow and the rest of you, I beg."
"I am sorry, but what can I do? I hope you will excuse me," Brandow
whispered to Gotthold, as he resumed his place at the table. Gotthold
drew back, and could do nothing but accept the invitation of the
Pastor, who was sitting in one corner of the great leather-covered
sofa, and as Gotthold took his place beside him, leaned a little
forward, not without difficulty, and began to talk with a faltering
tongue.
"Yes, yes, my beloved friend, a sinful world, a wicked, sinful world,
but we must not be too harsh, not too harsh, for Heaven's sake! You
work all the week, or at least order your servants to work for you; but
they must not do it on Sunday, on pain of a heavy punishment. Just
before the beginning of this harvest, we sent out a paper written in
the strongest terms. What were they doing with the long hours? Idleness
is the beginning of all crimes: gambling, drinking--Rieke, a glass--two
glasses--don't you drink? Do very wrong--brewed myself--from a receipt
of my honored employer, Count Zernikow. I brewed more than three
hundred bowls during my career as tutor--could do it at last with my
eyes shut--with my eyes shut--eyes shut."
He had only stammered the last words, his heavy head fell forward, and
the lower part of his face disappeared amid the folds of his crumpled
white cravat. He sank helplessly back into his corner.
The vacant face filled Gotthold with angry contempt.
The man had realized the promise of the boy; intoxication had torn away
the mask of hypocrisy, and there was the stupid, dissolute face of the
Halle student, whom Gotthold so well remembered. It could not be
otherwise. But that this pitiful creature should be his father's
successor, this blinking owl sit in the eyrie of the eagle, whose fiery
eyes had always sought the sun; this coarse buffoon be permitted to
tinkle his bells in the very place where the preacher, with glowing
eloquence, had summoned his hearers to repentance and atonement, seemed
to him a personal insult. And yet this man was in his proper place; the
flock was worthy of the shepherd; everything here was of a piece--like
a picture drawn by some master hand, in the boldest outlines and most
glaring colors: the drunken Pastor nodding in the sofa corner, the
excited, wine-flushed faces of the gamblers, the voluptuous figure of
the maid-servant passing to and fro and handing the fiery beverage to
the revellers, exchanging a sly smile or hasty word with one,
coquettishly pushing away the hand of another, who tried to pass his
arm around her waist--the true goddess of this temple of sin!--and the
whole enveloped in the circling wreaths of gray smoke which ascended
from the constantly burning pipes, and floated in dusky red rings
around the dim wicks of the candles; only that it was no picture, but
the coarsest, rudest, most commonplace reality. And alas, the outrage
that she should be compelled to live under this roof, that the wild
riot should re-echo even in her quiet room--not for the first or last
time!-that these were the men who frequented the house--these
empty-headed, silly young noblemen, this rough upstart, with his coarse
hands and coarser jests. And when this company of fauns and satyrs
departed, to have for her only consoler solitude--solitude which stared
at her with cold, hard, piercing serpent eyes. There they were, those
very eyes; they had just glanced over the cards with a quick stealthy
look! Those eyes, and hers--soft, gentle, tender!
Gotthold no longer saw the gamblers. He beheld her sitting in the
lonely nursery beside her child's playthings; a touching figure, still
so girlish in its soft, delicate outlines. He saw the sad face suffused
with a roseate flush of joy, saw it disfigured with pain and terror-he
lived over in imagination the whole scene, which already seemed like a
dream; and dreamed on of a future which must surely come, a future full
of sunlight, love, and poetry.
He could not have told how long he had been sitting absorbed in
thought, when a loud noise at the gaming-table suddenly startled him.
Something unusual seemed to have happened; Hans Redebas and Brandow
alone retained their seats, the others were bending over the table with
eager faces; even Rieke was gazing so intently that she forgot to push
away the Assessor's arm, which had been thrown around her waist.
"Do you take it again?" cried Redebas.
"Yes."
"Another thousand? That will make it five!"
"Devil take it, yes!"
A breathless silence followed, in which Gotthold heard nothing but the
noise of the cards Redebas dealt, and then another outcry and tumult,
such as had previously roused him from his revery, only this time it
was so loud that even the drunken Pastor staggered out of his corner.
Gotthold approached the table. His first glance rested upon Brandow's
face, which was deadly pale; but his thin lips were firmly compressed,
and a disagreeable smile even sparkled in his stern, cold eyes, as he
now cried, turning to the new-comer:
"They have plucked me finely, Gotthold; but night never lasts forever."
"But this," cried Redebas throwing the cards on the table, and making a
memorandum in his pocket-book, "I decline!"
"What does that mean?" asked Brandow.
"That I will play no more," answered Redebas with a loud laugh, closing
his pocket-book and rising heavily.
"I always thought the loser could break up the game, not the winner."
"If the winner is not sure of his point--oh! yes."
"I demand an explanation!" cried Brandow, pushing the table aside.
"Why, Brandow, do be reasonable!" exclaimed Otto and Gustav von
Plueggen, in the same breath.
"Are you in partnership again?" answered Brandow with a sneering laugh,
and then stepped before Redebas: "I demand an explanation at once!"
The giant had drawn back a step: "Oho," he cried; "if that's what you
want, come on!"
"My dear Brandow," said the Assessor soothingly, putting himself
between them.
"I know what I am doing, Herr Assessor," answered Brandow, pushing him
aside.
"And I know too," cried Redebas, throwing up the window, and shouting
across the quiet court-yard in a voice like the roar of a lion.
"Harness the horses, August! harness the horses!"
A scene of wild confusion followed, in which all shouted together, so
that Gotthold could only distinguish a word here and there. Hans
Redebas raved loudest of all, but apparently quite as much from fear as
anger, while Brandow remained comparatively calm, and was evidently
intent upon separating the Assessor, who was constantly intermeddling,
from the three others whom the Pastor now joined, and by all possible
signs announced his intention of making a speech, in which he actually
several times got as far as the beginning: "My beloved friends!"
The three carriages, to which the impatient coachmen had harnessed the
horses long before, drove up. The quarrel had been continued from the
room to the hall, from the hall to the door, and even to the carriage
steps.
"We shall see, we shall see," cried Hans Redebas; "are you in, Pastor?
Then, in the devil's name, drive on--we shall see," he shouted again
from the carriage window, as the powerful Danish horses trotted away at
a rapid pace towards the northern gate, from whence the shorter road,
which, however, was scarcely visible in the darkness, led through the
forest to Dahlitz.
Meantime Otto and Gustav von Plueggen had finally become involved in a
quarrel with each other. Gustav, who had no lamps on his carriage,
declared that he must go across the moor, while Otto wanted to follow
Redebas. Gustav had already borne so much from his older brother that
day, that he considered himself obliged to take this refusal as a
personal insult. He had no bundle of hay in front of his head, and
wouldn't run the risk of breaking his skull against the trees in the
forest. "Then he could light the straw in it, and find his way home by
that," Otto replied.
So they drove away in opposite directions.
"That is very foolish," said Brandow, looking after Gustav's carriage.
"One will get across and the other won't," replied Hinrich Scheel.
"We know that you are the best driver."
"An accident is liable to happen to any one."
"That is, you want it to be so."
"It seems you don't."
Brandow did not answer immediately. He had thought the matter less
difficult; but he need not break his neck, only an arm or leg.
He cast a timid glance through the window; the light fell directly upon
Gotthold's grave, handsome face. Brandow ground his teeth. No, it was
not enough. He must have his life; the damned hypocrite deserved
nothing better, and where was the crime? An accident might happen to
the best driver.
Suddenly he started. He had not thought of that before. By his quarrel
with his associates at the gaming-table he had fortunately prevented
the whole party from remaining all night until broad daylight, as they
had often done before, and thus robbed Gotthold of a suitable excuse
for staying also, if such was his intention--and of that Brandow, after
what he had heard, was firmly convinced. He had also, by intentionally
keeping the Assessor out of the quarrel, made it impossible for the
latter to go away at once with the others, though he had not lacked
invitations, as thus his prey would have escaped him, for Gotthold
probably would not have remained without the Assessor. But now--how
could he separate the two? If the Assessor stayed--and he did not seem
to think of leaving--Gotthold would stay also, or at least have a
most plausible excuse for doing so; and if he forced the Assessor to
go--
Again his sullen glance wandered towards the two men in the room--the
Assessor talking to Gotthold with the most animated gestures; the
latter, to judge from his expression and movements, listening
reluctantly.
"I drove them both here, so I can drive them both back again," said
Hinrich Scheel, pressing down the ashes in his pipe.
Both! One! yes; but what had the other done to him? Nothing! Nothing at
all! And he had received ten thousand thalers from him to-day.
"It's a pity about the beautiful money, if any accident should happen
to us on the moor," said Hinrich, knocking the tobacco out of his pipe;
"I'll get the carriage ready, and take those jades of Jochen Kluets; it
would be a pity to hurt our grays."
He walked slowly away. Brandow's eyes followed the short dark figure;
he wanted to call him back, to tell him he need not harness the horses,
but only a strange, hoarse, choking sound came from his throat; his
tongue clung to his palate, and as he raised his foot he staggered like
a drunken man, and was obliged to hold fast to the trunk of one of the
old linden-trees, through whose thick branches a violent gust of wind
was just roaring. The rain, which again began to fall, beat into his
face, now burning with a strange flush, although he was shivering from
head to foot.
There! What was that? The noise of the carriage which Hinrich was
pushing out of the barn. There was still time! But, after all, he had
said nothing, nothing at all; how could he help it if an accident
happened to Hinrich on the moor at night?
Gotthold and the Assessor had remained in the room; the latter was
trying to explain to Gotthold that Brandow had certainly been quite
right when he asked that the game should be continued, but had done
wrong to express his wish in so peremptory a manner; and finally he
ought not to have forgotten that he was the host, and as such must
overlook any little impropriety on the part of his guests.
During the latter part of his long speech, the Assessor had addressed
himself in an admonitory tone, partly to Brandow, who had just entered
the room, and going up to the side-board swallowed several glasses of
wine. "I have in fact been compelled to overlook many such things
to-day, and am obliged to you, Herr Assessor, for keeping me in
practice up to the last minute."
The tone in which Brandow said this, and the gesture with which he
approached the Assessor, were so peculiar that the latter was partly
sobered, and stared in astonishment at his host, who now came a step
nearer and said in a low voice:
"Or what do you call it, when the guests, in presence of the servants,
subject the conduct of the master of the house to such an unsparing
criticism?" and he pointed to Rieke, under whose direction another maid
servant and the groom Fritz were beginning to remove the glasses
standing about on the tables, and sweep up the fragments scattered over
the floor.
The Assessor drew himself up to his full height.
"I beg your pardon," said he, "and will request you to be kind enough
to place your carriage at my disposal for my return. I regret that I
did not accept from your other guests the favor I must now solicit of
you. I can still depend upon your company, Gotthold?"
"I think Brandow will make no objections."
"I beg the gentlemen to act their own pleasure."
They bowed to each other with distant civility. A few minutes after,
the same light carriage that had brought the two gentlemen to Dollan a
few hours before rolled over the rough road into the dark, gusty night.
Hinrich Scheel drove the horses.